Department of Philosophy TCD. Great Philosophers. Dennett. Tom Farrell. Department of Surgical Anatomy RCSI Department of Clinical Medicine RCSI

Transcription

1 Department of Philosophy TCD Great Philosophers Dennett Tom Farrell Department of Philosophy TCD Department of Surgical Anatomy RCSI Department of Clinical Medicine RCSI

2 1. Socrates 2. Plotinus 3. Augustine 4. Margaret Cavendish 5. Spinoza 6. J.S. Mill 7. Nietzsche 8. G.E. Moore 9. Russell 10. Foucault 11. Dennett

3 ? Lovers of wisdom Philosophers?? Same problem(s) Does god exist? What is justice? What is time? Gradual encroachment by science? Same method Conceptual analysis Getting language clear ( logical grammar )

4 Arguments and Isms Premise 1 Premise 2.. Conclusion ism - what is the actual content?

5 Great Philosophers? Test of time Significant contribution to solution of problem, or development of method Offer a new picture

6 1. Socrates 2. Plotinus 3. Augustine 4. Margaret Cavendish 5. Spinoza 6. J.S. Mill 7. Nietzsche 8. G.E. Moore 9. Russell 10. Foucault 11. Dennett

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8 The Divine Disease Shivering Loss of speech Trouble breathing Collapse Excretion of the phlegm Aura

9 Hippocrates And men ought to know that from nothing else but from the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations. And by this we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear, and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet, and what unsavoury... And by the same organ we become mad and delirious, and fears and terrors assail us... All these things we endure from the brain, when it is not healthy... In these ways I am of the opinion that the brain exercises the greatest power in man.

10 In short - all mental activity depends on the brain? depends on

11 Plato/ Aristotle Plato soul is separable from body Aristotle - psyche (historically breath ) Not separable from body (Heart vs brain)

12 Central sulcus Pre central gyrus / Primary motor area lum

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15 Descartes Body vs soul many functions left to body (growth, reproduction, nutrition etc) Mind concerned with thought, consciousness Physical extended Mental no material properties (solidity, extension etc) Dualism :? Mind body interaction? Causality

16 Emphasise the mental 2 Paths Emphasise the physical/ material Emphasise The mental to the exclusion of the physical (idealism) The material to the exclusion of the mental (materialism)

17 Emphasise the mental Picture Body is mortal Life after death (and? Before death) Morality Argument (from Descartes) We know the mental directly The physical/material only secondarily

18 Introspection Psychology method = introspection Problem results not reproducible

19 Change of Picture Development of science Successful! Explaining Predicting Technology Scientific method Objective Third person Reproducible

20 Behaviourism Psychology - Move from introspection to behaviourism (Watson, Skinner) Philosophy Logical behaviourism?ryle?wittgenstein Dennett

21 Emphasise the physical Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia It would be easier for me to attribute matter and extension to the soul, than to attribute to an immaterial being the capacity to move and be moved by a body. La Mettrie (1750), de Sade BF Skinner The solution is to identify the mind with the physical person. Human thought is human behaviour.

22 The Hard Problem Leibniz Imagine a machine whose construction would enable it to think, to sense, and to have perception; one could conceive it enlarged while retaining the same proportions, so that one could enter into it, just like into a windmill. One should, when within it, find only parts pushing one another, and never anything by which to explain a perception.

23 The Hard Problem We have no idea how electrochemical processes could possibly generate consciousness. The problem of experience subjective aspect (Chalmers) There is something it is like to be a conscious organism (Nagel) QUALIA

24 Intentionality Another (pretty) hard problem! How does a thought manage to be of or about something? (how does the sentence the cat is on the mat manage to be about a state of affairs?)

25 And a serious problem! Epiphenomenalism Physics is causally closed So even if we have thoughts etc, they are just idling, like the hum from a machine. ---They do not change the world. This undermines human action and morality!

26 So we can expect of any philosopher of mind that he will give an account of -- Experience Intentionality Human action

27 Theory of Evolution Teleology replaced by mechanism There is in fact no intelligence, no designer behind the life forms (species) we find in the world the process of evolution is blind.

28 Dennett Intentionality is basic issue How do neurons achieve meaning? Thermostat has the capacity for appropriate response to stimuli. So we might (?metaphorically) attribute an intention to a thermostat to keep the temperature in the room constant

29 The Intentional Stance Our attribution of mental states to humans is just another (more elaborate) example of the same thing. It is a tactic that enables us to explain human behaviour quickly and neatly. Explanations in terms of psychological attitudes are useful for everyday purposes, but not for scientific ones. Ultimate explanation would be in terms of neuroscience or even physics but impractical for everyday purposes.

30 The Intentional Stance We should not think that there really are beliefs and desires We retain this vocabulary because it enables us to explain and predict human behaviour Folk Psychology --But the vocabulary refers to behaviour patterns, not to really existing mental entities

31 Different stances Intentional stance Design stance Physical stance

32 ?Metaphorical There is no principled (theoretically motivated) way to distinguish original intentionality from derived intentionality There is a continuum of cases of legitimate attributions, with no theoretically motivated threshold distinguishing the literal from the metaphorical

33 Many of the most interesting and important features of our world have emerged gradually from a world that initially lacked them function, intentionality, consciousness, morality, value and it is a fool s errand to try to identify the first or most simple instance of the real thing.

34 We can also take advantage of the intentional stance to explore models that break down large, sophisticated agents into organizations of simpler subsystems that are themselves intentional systems, sub-personal agents that are composed of teams of still simpler, stupider agents, until we reach a level where the agents are so stupid that they can be replaced by a machine. Some states of organisms (primitive organisms in evolutionary terms not metaphysically different from thermostats) were semantically evaluable

35 Semantically evaluable Neural states could bear enough similarity to hoping, believing etc to warrant the notion that these mental states are in fact nothing but brain states. Compare wanting porridge and wanting ice cream (or wanting money!)

36 Denial of Qualia Qualia do not play any role in any causal chain between the mind and the world Evidence inverted spectrum argument Zombie argument So qualia do not exist

37 Multiple drafts Dennett denies that there is a place in the brain where consciousness occurs No Cartesian theatre There is a variety of different sensory inputs from an event, and a variety of interpretations of these inputs. These occur at different times, like multiple drafts of an essay

38 Multiple drafts If one of the drafts is sufficiently assertive/ strong, it will cause the person to engage in some behaviour e.g. say something. There is no clear boundary between neurological processes those which do not rise to the level of consciousness and those which do (ie result in behaviour)

39 Heterophemomenology Traditional phenomenology accepts the subjects reports as authoritative. Heterophenomenology: accept subject s reports as authoritative only about how things seem to the subject Take other evidence into account behaviour, neuroscience, scanning, investigator s understanding etc.

40 For Dennett the hard problem does not exist - but neither does consciousness